A true story (initially told in a book Guevara wrote called "Notas de Viate"), DIARIES is about the first nascent stirrings of social conscience within the future Latin American revolutionary. They apparently came about due to his seeing first-hand the lousy deal working people were being fed by the South American elite, and from an emotional rapport he developed with various downtrodden types, including a colony of lepers he briefly treated during a stay at a hospital on the banks of the Amazon.

Guevara was a middle-class Argentinian medical student at the time, and getting his first taste of raw experience outside his Argentine borders. The DIARIES adventure happened two and a half years before he hooked up with Fidel Castro, and about three years before he sailed to Cuba to join the revolution.

The poetic grace in THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES comes from the fact that Guevara doesn't absorb politics or dogma, but plain humanistic compassion. The invisible sub-heading is not "How I Became a Communist" but "How I Happened to See Beyond Myself and Realize How Badly People are Hurting."

I was knocked flat when I saw THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES at Sundance last January, and I felt the same way after catching it again last Friday evening. And I'm just starting to realize that it may become a contender for a Best Picture Oscar early next year instead of one for Best Foreign Film, despite the settings and all the actors speaking Spanish.

Nothing is really settled one way or the other, but the Portugese-speaking CITY OF GOD and the Italian-speaking LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL were Best Picture contenders, so there's a precedent to consider. And since DIARIES is a multi-national enterprise, no one country is likely to submit it as a Best Foreign Language contender.

DIARIES was directed and co-written by a Brazilian (Salles), based on a book by a native Argentinian famed for his associations with Cuba, filmed all around South America, and produced by a team of U.S.-based Anglos, including Robert Redford, Michael Nozik and Rebecca Yeldham.

As far as U.S. distribber Focus features is concerned, going for Best Picture may be the only shot at getting a second commercial run next year. As Academy spokesperson John Pavlik reminded me yesterday, any foreign-language film can be a Best Picture nominee as long as it plays commercially here for a week or longer.

Salles could easily rate as a Best Director nominee, and Bernal as a Best Actor candidate. And there's an emerging consensus among journos that Serna is almost certain to wind up with a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

I spoke to Salles last Saturday afternoon. He seemed like a good guy -- bright, cautious, measured, easy-going. I guess I'll run my interview piece a little closer to the film's late September opening.

Meanwhile, write down "THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES" on a yellow post-it and stick it to your refrigerator door. And pick up a copy of Guevara's tome (re-published in 2003 as a trade paperback by Ocean Books) the next time you're inside one of the corporate-owned book stores.

Best We've Seen

There's nothing all that good happening in August except for COLLATERAL and OPEN WATER, which both open this Friday. Okay, you can add HERO (Miramax, 8.20), but you have to be queer for Chinese battle bullshit (swords, red tunics, flying arrows, etc.) and action-film fluidity and art direction for their own sakes. Intense colors, wire work, killer choreography, et. al.

I've had it with this crap. I say "no" to all Asian films with guys flying around with wires on their back and weapons in their hands, and "no" to the whole Quentin Tarantino/Jet Li/John Woo/Oxide Pang/Run-Run Shaw/ David Chute "China desk" syndrome of the last fifteen years.

Okay, I'm not dismissing the whole Asian action-genre thing, but I've had it up to here. If I see one more Asian bad guy in a dark suit and a pair of shades, etc. I've gotten off-topic...sorry.

What I'm trying to say is that the year is essentially two-thirds over, and I've got a list of 33 films released since January that are fairly good or very good or phenomenal. I've actually chosen 13 that can truly be called the Best of the Year, and 20 that fall under Honorable Mention.

And we all know the best movies usually open in the final four months, so figure another 15 or 20 added by December 31st for a total of fifty-plus. And a "very best" list of 20, give or take.

So far, in order of personal preference, here are the best films of 2004 (and that means dramatically searing, beautifully made, stylistically novel or unusual, thematically out-there or otherwise grabby, but not necessarily all of these things in a single bundle):

THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (Focus Features, 9.24); COLLATERAL (DreamWorks, 8.6); MARIA FULL OF GRACE (Fine Line, 7.16); MAN ON FIRE (20th Century Fox, 4.23); TOUCHING THE VOID (IFC Films, 1.23); FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (Lions Gate/IFC, 6.25); DOGVILLE (Lions Gate, 3.26); THE CORPORATION (Big Pictures Media, 4.23); OPEN WATER (Lions Gate, 8.6); NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Fox Searchlight, 6.11); THE RETURN (Kino International, 2.6); THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (Universal, 7.23); and ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE (Sag Harbor-Basement Pictures, 7.23).

The respectable, commendable, better-than-pretty-good entries are....

SEPTEMBER TAPES (First Look Pictures, 9.24), MIRACLE (Disney, 2.6), THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (Paramount, 7.30); INTERMISSION (IFC Films, 3.19), TAKING LIVES (Warner Bros., 3.19), HELLBOY (Revolution/Sony, 4.2); I'M NOT SCARED (Miramax, 4.9); MC5: A TRUE TESTIMONIAL (Avatar Films, 4.23); SPARTAN (Warner Bros., 3.12); SUPER SIZE ME (Roadside Attractions/Samuel Goldwyn, 5.4), THE PUNISHER (Lions Gate, 4.16); and THE MOTHER (Sony Pictures Classics, 5.28).

Along with THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT (Regent Releasing, 6.11), THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR (Focus Features, 7.14), DAWN OF THE DEAD (Universal, 3.19); ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (Focus Features, 1.23); THE DREAMERS (Fox Searchlight, 2.6), MONSIEUR IBRAHIM (Sony Pictures Classics (2.13), OSAMA (United Artists, 1.30); and CARANDIRU (Sony Pictures Classics, 5.14).

A nod to STARSKY AND HUTCH, a comedy that was funnier in a much more unusual (almost revolutionary) way than people were willing to give it credit for. That Ben-and-Owen thing is a comic attitude unto itself.

And an honorary lashing for THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, a well-made thing that wallowed in its own sado-masochistic, wack-job realm of Judeo-Christian peculiarity.

And notes of regret, embarassment and revulsion for all the stinkers, including but not limited to AGAINST THE ROPES, CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN, EUROTRIP, CHASING LIBERTY, RAISING HELEN, CONNIE AND CARLA, VAN HELSING, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, CATWOMAN, I ROBOT, ANCHORMAN, et. al.

Any disagreements or fuck you's or woo-hoo's, send 'em in.

Munster Mash

The waffling thing aside, the most common rap against John Kerry is that he's a bit too taciturn. Bush has that joshing regular-guy quality that Nascar dads and "undecideds" seem to warm to, but not John. The most common venting of this criticism is that he's Lurch-like. In the wildly popular "This Land" video, the George Bush character says to Kerry, "You're a Herman Munster!"

In short, the joke is common as dirt. The reason "This Land" creators Gregg and Evan Spiridellis used the Herman Munster bit is precisely because it's a cliché. So it's hard to take seriously anyone who claims to have never heard of it.

I'm not saying that the folks at Universal Home Video are deliberately making a snide political comment about Kerry by deciding to release "The Munsters -- The Complete First Season" on DVD on August 24th. I'm not that dopey or paranoid. But executives with the label had to know that people here and there would perceive a vague political echo, given the widespread awareness of the Kerry-Munster linkage.

I mean, c'mon....how could they not? What kind of gopher hole could these guys be living in? An online press release about the 'Munsters' box set was sent out yesterday (i.e., Tuesday) morning, and "This Land" has been viewed by tens of millions over the last two or three weeks.

"The DVD release of 'The Munsters: The Complete First Season' by Universal Pictures Home Video alongside the references to Herman Munster in the animated short 'This Land' is purely coincidental," says Universal Home Video spokesperson Vivian Mayer.

Besides, she adds, the Munster package is "part of a big TV-to-DVD initiative. We had a big announcement about this last month. We're putting out [packages] of 'Knight Rider,' 'Miami Vice' and other series. Universal Home Video's TV-to-DVD initiative has been in development for several years and includes several popular shows from the Universal Studios library. This is purely coincidental."

Okay, fine...but the timing sure is weird. 'The Munsters' was a popular TV series in 1963 and '64, and DVD's have been selling big for five or six years now. And yet with all the possible release dates options they had to choose from, Universal Home Video decides to release 'The Munsters: The Complete First Season' a month and a half after the release of' 'This Land,' and smack dab in the middle of the Presidential election campaign.

Not eight months ago, not in April '04, and not in late November or December '04 after the election would be over...but right in the thick of it.

And right before the start of the Republican Convention (August 30 to September 2), almost, if you want to be antsy about it, as a kind of audience warm-up to what we all know will be a huge anti-Kerry blitzkreig.

I asked Gregg Spiridellis about this whole thing and he wrote back the following:

"The striking resemblance of John Kerry and Herman Munster is difficult to ignore. I'd be curious to know if anyone's ever seen them in the same room together. However, my guess is that the release of 'The Munsters' box set has nothing to do with John Kerry's Herman-esque appearance or the release of our cartoon. I've never seen a studio move that fast."

Speaking of Oddballs

In the piece I wrote on 7.16 about Columbia Tristar Home Video's pan-and-scan release of CASTLE KEEP, I quoted a marketing executive named Allison Eiggers. I went over the spelling of her name when I spoke to her, letter by letter, but somehow she thought I was saying "b" when I was actually saying "e." So her last name became "Eiggers" rather than the correctly spelled "Biggers."

Okay, this happens. Obviously the safest way to go on spelling checks it to say "b" as in boy or bravo, and not just depend on the sharpness of your consonants. But why didn't Biggers or somebody else at ColTristar ring or e-mail and explain the error? Why did I only learn about this mistake from a late-arriving e-mail sent by a friend at CTHV? If you ask me, this is corporate indifference in the flesh. "Suits" like to feel untouchable. The less contact they have with ground-level people like me, the more protected they feel from the rough and tumble.

Debunked Village

"One huge problem with THE VILLAGE is that it's not scary at all. Not in the slightest. My girlfriend was expecting a frightfest, and I think she gasped once. For a preview promising a white-knuckle thriller, this seemed like a big flaw to me.

"The next problem is that it's dreadfully slow. Within the first reel, I started getting bored. Certainly, Shyamalan has taken his time in the past, but it's always been a means to an end. This time, it feels like he's going through the motions, and the pauses in the heavy-handed dialogue become more annoying than anything. I've always admired the way Shyamalan can build an atmosphere, a certain murky mood for his films that has always caused me to compare him to Hitchcock in several regards, yet this time there is no mood, no atmosphere....not really anything to keep our interest.

"I would comment on the acting, but there's not much to say. I enjoyed Adrien Brody at first, but after a few minutes his DiCaprio-from-GILBERT GRAPE-inspired routine just got old. Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, the rest of the 'elders' and Joaquin Phoenix are all surprisingly unused, pretty much made to look sorrowful and stern. Bryce Howard is the only one who really shines; it's a shame she couldn't have better dialogue to deliver.

"My biggest problem is the twist, if you could call it that. Anyone with a since of humor shouldn't be surprised by the twist at all... they should be mad. Why? Because the twist is like a bad joke, and I know.....I'm the one who cracked it.

"Early on, when trying to entertain myself during the slow first reels, I leaned over and joked with my girlfriend about how funny it would be if [spoiler omitted] would happen... and then when it did happen, I was pissed off. And as the film went on, I got even more upset. How could this happen? Is this Shyamalan playing a sick joke on his audience? That's an ending?

I'm not trying to give anything away, but it seems that the moral of the story is that real life is more scary than any monster... Sure. But when you pay good money to see a scary movie about strange "creatures" who live outside an isolated village, methinks one should be entitled to that movie. M. Night Shyamalan owes his audience an apology." -- Jacob W., St. Louis, Missouri,

"I am bit frustrated by the decided panning of THE VILLAGE from many critics, and I honestly just don't get it.

"Each article I've read mentions a 'twist ending' or 'the big payoff' within the first paragraph alone. The problem is this: any movie will be a letdown if you seek only to find the big payoff at the end because you don't invest in the story along the way. You end up looking for clues and secret messages and miss the journey.

"I realize that M. Night has hindered himself with the huge success of THE SIXTH SENSE (and its surprise ending) followed by UNBREAKABLE. However, I felt SIGNS was a deftly crafted science-fiction film with not one but several 'reveals' scattered throughout. And THE VILLAGE, if taken as a whole, is a wonderfully understated and stirring film. It feels fresh and alive. I love that there is not a hint of the standard CG smorgasbord and sarcastic, whippy dialogue so prevalent in movies today.

"Plus the story is carried along by gorgeous cinematography (Roger Deakins) and a magnificent score (James Newton Howard). Is the story subtle? Absolutely But a burn? Not a chance. The packed house that we were a part of at 10:00 pm was buzzing, not booing, as the credits rolled.

"It's an interesting parallel that Vincent Gallo, in your Friday column, states the following about a huge reveal in THE BROWN BUNNY: "If you go into it waiting to see a blow job, you're not getting the journey." I guess that's how I and perhaps M. Night feels about THE VILLAGE: if you go in waiting for the twist ending, you are missing it altogether." -- Brad Jones

"Shyamalan's ability at coming up with a surprising, catchy ending appears to be waning thin. Or did we expect too much from him after the THE SIXTH SENSE? Did M. Night perhaps jinx his career with that successful film?

But what if we reverse the release times of his movies, with THE VILLAGE first, then SIGNS (which, except for the final 15 minutes or so, is a spooky, creepy, well done film), then UNBREAKABLE (smart, interesting movie, with a weak surprise ending), then THE SIXTH SENSE? His box office draw wouldn't be half what it is now, which I will admit is very impressive currently. I know this: if he doesn't improve with the story soon, saying 'from the director of THE SIXTH SENSE' will wear off and then he'll be shit out of luck." -- Colby Clugston, Alexandria, VA.

Halitosis

"Believe it or not, Altoids (and other peppermint/spearmint based products) most likely make your breath worse. Peppermint oil is a muscle relaxant that relaxes your esophogus muscles, allowing things that should stay in your digestive track to get out. It's a fact -- you can look it up." -- Dave Lichtman

Wells to Lichtman: Jesus H. Christ. I feel betrayed.

Blowin' in the Wind

That Sunset Boulevard billboard for THE BROWN BUNNY (Wellspring, 8.27) everyone's been talking about the last three or four days is obviously crude, but it gets your attention. The press coverage (including, surprisingly, a piece by the NEW YORK TIMES' Sharon Waxman that ran today, 8.4.) will probably jack up business...in Los Angeles, at least.

It's a selectively blurry black-and-white shot of costar Chloe Sevigny fellating the film's star-director-producer Vincent Gallo, taken from a semi-discreet angle. It's a frame capture taken from BUNNY's already famous climactic sex scene. The billboard is located near the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights, and it cost Wellspring $50,000 for a month's exposure.

It's not just the photo that gets you, but the billboard's cheesy design. It looks like something the Mitchell Brothers or Russ Meyer might have run for one of their pseudo-hip porn films in the early '70s. The copy at the bottom reads "IN COLOR X ADULTS ONLY," which dates back to the era of Joey Dee and the Peppermint Lounge.

This is an apparent attempt at ironic sexual advertising....to do it brazenly but also to put it "in quotes." We're going for a low sell to the groin, the billboard declares, but hold on. The anachronistic look of the thing, which alludes to a flamboyantly grimy attitude espoused by sexploitation film ads during the Lyndon Johnson adminstration, makes it a kind of commentary piece. We're pretending to be an Edy Williams film, even though we're not. Get it?

Okay, whatever, but there's still a disconnect between what Gallo told me about his film last week and what he told Waxman on Tuesday.

He told me that THE BROWN BUNNY "only works if you go into the film with an open mind. If you go into it waiting to see a blow job, you're not getting the journey. I certainly didn't endure a three and a half year struggle to get it made just to receive fellatio [on camera]."

But now he and Wellspring's distribution chief Ryan Werner are hawking the film, primarily, to unsophisticated moviegoers who, once they see the film, will probably be indifferent or immune to any aspect of "the journey" except the most obvious.

"This is my idea of a beautiful billboard - that's all it is," Gallo told Waxman on Tuesday. "There's so much negative hearsay about the film, so much expectation about what the film contains, that in a sense, the film has been reduced to comment about that graphic scene. [So] I thought to use a provocative image that reflects the graphic scene, but to make that graphic image have emotional context and drama and design and an aesthetic nature, and to legitimize it by placing it in a more corporate environment, a billboard."

If Gallo and Wellspring had tried to sell the film with an allusion to its sad emotional undercurrent (it's basically a film about a guy dealing with grief), the $50,000 expenditure probably wouldn't have paid off. We know this. We know what gets our attention. Even Sharon Waxman took notice. Okay, so it's a slow news period.

But respecting THE BROWN BUNNY as I do, I wish Gallo had taken the high road regardless. I know, I know.